A Look Ahead: Robotics and Nanotechnology

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Two emerging fields with the potential to alter the human experience beyond recognition.

By Gerry Block

There are certain lucky generations of people in human history fortunate enough to be born in times of dramatic technologic breakthrough. Judged against the scope of human history, the past hundred years or so are epic in terms of the amount of technologic development achieved and societal change produced. Even judged within this sudden glory period of the human race, the past 20 years have seen the rise of, we'd argue, the very best technologies yet, computers and the internet.

From the perspective of my generation, it's a rather hard to imagine going to college while writing papers on a typewriter and lacking the internet for research. Those even younger would probably find the idea of a world without ubiquitous cell phones equally shocking. In these times of such rapid technologic change, it's rather likely the each successive generation will benefit from new devices to the degree to which it will be hard for them to imagine life without it.

Looking ahead, we believe that two great avenues exist for dramatic technologic and societal change on the scale of the rise of the internet: robotics and nanotechnology. Both exist in relatively formative stages at the moment, yet dramatic progress is achieved on almost a monthly basis. Heavy manufacturing is already entirely dependent upon automated robotics and there are already more than 250 consumer products produced via nanotechnology. Looking back, both new genres of tech are already more developed than computers in the 1970s, which bodes well for exactly how far things will come.

Looking forward at robotics Robotic manufacturing arms are one thing, but what people really want to see are robots that are actually walking around. It's on this point that it becomes particularly obvious why humans are the only bipedal animals on the planet that actually walk constantly: it takes a lot of brain power to maintain balance on two feet. Even Honda's famous Asmio has been known to take headers down flights of stairs, but that isn't putting the brakes on development.

The relatively new Kawada HPR-3 Promet Mark II is one of a new class of biped robots that actually begins to show promise as a potential human replacement. Waterproof, and able to perform manual tasks via human remote control, the robot could be a forerunner to the manual labor bots long prophesized in science fiction.

While walking on two feet can give robots a comforting human style stance, four legs and more have great advantages in stability and load bearing. BostonDynamics' BigDog quadruped is credited as being the most advanced robot of its type. On the other hand, the movement of the creation is oddly horrifying.

With such examples of robotic creations already in action, it's somewhat shocking to imagine where robotics may stand 20-years down the road. The potential for actual consumer availability is also somewhat unreal. Honda's newest Asimo model costs less than $1-million to manufacture today. Were robotics to progress along the path blazed by personal computers, massively more capable robots may one day be available for almost a pittance.

Looking forward at nanotechnology Nanotechnology is a term applied to a rather broad scope of science inquiry, in that the field is a culmination of a wide range of disciplines including applied physics, supermolecular chemistry, colloidal science, and mechanical and electrical engineering. All culminate in the applied ability to control matter on a scale between 1 and 100 nanometers, which means actual manipulation of individual molecules and atoms.

Future dreams for nanotechnology revolve around potential applications for carbon nanotubes, which are theoretically the strongest structures imaginable in the universe as we understand it, and farther out, self-assembling nanomachines that will be able to replicate themselves and build other structures, atom by atom. Though a degree of concern surrounds the theoretic possibility of run-away self assembly and deadly 'grey-goo,' the potential for atomic-level construction, when fully realized, may well catapult our species to near godlike capabilities in every scientific, medical, and engineering effort we pursue.